Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Who funded that?

Tonight, some guy stopped to talk to me who said that it was all well and good to teach kids about tolerance, because it wasn't gays' fault that they were like that, it was their parents' fault. See, kids turn gay because parents don't love them enough, and that means the first time they feel affection for somebody, they confuse it with sex.

"Uh, I don't think that's right at all," I say.

"No, they proved it with studies. There was a study in Germany where they took ten kids and the nurse only touched three of them, but five of them could hear her singing. The ones that were touched turned out normal; the ones that only heard singing grew up messed up, you know, gay; the other five died," he said.

"Sir, I'm sorry, but there is literally no way at all that they did that study again at UCLA."

"I read about it in the Times."

"Well, then, either you're misremembering it, or the Times got it wrong, because there is literally no way that an Institutional Review Board would let researchers kill kids."

"I read about it in the Times."

"There is absolutely zero chance that either of these studies happened after World War Two, and I know enough people in academia that there is no way that could happen. I'm sorry. Anyway, back to the Fair Education Act — it protects kids now, since you agree that it's not their fault that they're bullied."

"Oh, bullying, that's terrible. We just need to get parents to stop plopping the kids down in front of the TV, ignoring them, you know, so they can work an extra job to buy more cars or whatever. Then they won't be gay or bullied."

"So, can I count on your support for the Fair Education Act?"

"No, it's the parents we need to work on, not schools. If parents just loved their kids, no one would be gay."

"Uh. OK. You have a great night then," I say, thinking that this guy needs professional fucking therapy, and if I have to talk to him for 30 more seconds, I'm going to slip and tell him exactly how stupid I think he is.

I get home, and I start talking to Amy about it. Like, seriously, what kinda department would let you just start killing babies? And what's the lit review there look like? What are the previous baby-killing experiments? "Multiple Modalities in Confined Infant Head Traumas?" Oh yeah, that's when we put 'em in a sack and hit 'em with hammers. But, you know, small sample size. To be sure, we're going to have to kill a lot more babies.

"Oh yeah, Amy says, "what about throwing them in rivers?"

"What kind of sample size do we need to get this published?" I say.

"What methodology are you using to distinguish your sacks of babies in the river from other people's sacks?" she asks.

"How long do we have to keep the bodies to make sure they stay dead once they're drowned?"